He was obviously being serious — and he wasthe man who was supposed to understand the way the world worked, far better than I did. If the Earthbound really were stuck in the mud, though, the Hardinist Cabal might have retained the habits it had had in my day, when it had consisted of PicoCon and a few good friends. If so, they might indeed have decided to tackle their problems by widening their circle — by welcoming people like Emily Marchant into the fold, on whatever terms were negotiable. Maybe the outer system powers-that-be thought of themselves as the kind of people who’d never go for that kind of deal, but Damon Hart had thought of himself that way at one time. So had I.
If Mortimer Gray was right, I thought, and nobody was crazy enough to go to war, the only matter to be settled was the balance of power at the conference table — including the question of who was entitled to a seat. Maybe this really was the same kind of game that Damon and I had played before, on a slightly bigger board. If Michael Lowenthal and Niamh Horne were only pretending to be adversaries, while their actual purpose was to get together and wrap up a deal to impose a series of Enclosure Acts on the entire solar system, there might be any number of third parties anxious to get a slice for themselves, as well as any number ambitious to sabotage the whole process.
I hoped that I might be beginning to see the light, but I knew that I was overreaching from a position of almost total ignorance. Gray was in a far better position than I was to guess who was doing what to whom and why.
I was saved from further self-torture by yet another knock on the door. Adam Zimmerman came in, without waiting for an invitation. “Mr. Lowenthal wants to call a conference,” he said, mildly. “He thinks we should discuss our situation, and make what plans we can.” Lowenthal had obviously got tired of waiting for Gray to come up with the goods.
I handed my bowl and the empty water bottle back to Mortimer Gray. Reflexively, he took them. “Thanks,” I said.
Gray wasn’t about to be dismissed like that; he hung around to watch the first authentic contact between the man who had once stolen the world and the mysterious monster whose crimes had been erased from the record.
“Are you all right now?” Adam Zimmerman asked me, solicitously.
“Pretty much,” I said. “I’ve been hurt before. How about you? This isn’t the kind of welcome you expected when you took your great leap into the unknown.”
“No,” he admitted, “it certainly isn’t. But it was always a gamble — and if I hadn’t taken it, I’d be dead. I might still get what I wanted — unless you know different.” His face was old and his eyes seemed weak, but that was all deceptive appearance. His mind was as determined as it ever was. He hadn’t been interested in me before but he was interested in me now, because I was the one who had talked to Alice.
“So far as I can tell,” I assured him, “our captors wish us well. We just got caught up in somebody else’s troubles. With luck, we’ll come through this. Even I might still get what I want, if I can figure out what it is.”
The look he gave me then was slightly pitying. He was a man who had known exactly what he wanted throughout his adult life. For him, the goal had always been crystal clear, and perfectly simple. That might make him an innocent, by my standards, or even a fool — but it was an enviable state of mind.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go confer, and make what plans we can.”
Twenty-Six
Common Cause
The pain in my face hadn’t gone away, but it had become duller. Moving around no longer increased its effect. At least I’d contrived to miss out on my fair share of the work that had had to be done. By the time I emerged from my cell the common space had been reorganized and tidied. The table had been assembled and set up, and eight chairs had been neatly distributed around it, one at each end and three along each side.
As soon as I saw the array I knew that the chairs at the ends might as well have had Michael Lowenthal’s and Niamh Horne’s names on them. The moment they had decided to call a conference they had set about modeling the situation as they saw it — or as they wanted others to see it. I paused to wonder whether our mysterious captors had done the same thing when they placed us in cells two by two, or whether they had simply sorted us out according to our existing associations.
The other seats about the conference table were distributed according to fairly obvious protocols. Adam Zimmerman had to have one of the middle seats, so that he would be equidistant from Lowenthal and Horne, and Davida had to have the other. Solantha Handsel had to be at Lowenthal’s right hand, and Mortimer Gray filled in the remaining gap on that side of the table. That left Christine and me — and I wasn’t unduly surprised when Lowenthal laid claim to me, seating me between him and Zimmerman. The power to determine the seating suggested that he had the upper hand at this stage, perhaps for no better reason than the fact that he had a bodyguard and Niamh Horne didn’t.
I resisted the temptation to sit where I wasn’t supposed to, or to request a formal agenda, or even to question Lowenthal’s assumption that he could play chairman. I tried, instead, to measure Niamh Horne’s reaction to Lowenthal’s presumption. Because her face was a mask and her eyes were machines, though, there was no expression to be read therein.
“So far,” Lowenthal said, “we’ve been wasting our time in accusations and recriminations. I think we have to accept that none of us knows why we have been taken prisoner, or by whom. Perhaps we’ll be told, in due course, but we can’t rely on it. In the meantime, we’re all in the same boat and we ought to try to work together, as constructively as possible.”
“Assuming that there’s anything constructive to do,” Niamh Horne added, but not in a challenging way.
“I’m not suggesting that we form an escape committee,” Lowenthal went on, keeping his own voice light. “I’m merely suggesting that we collaborate in assessing our situation and trying to figure out how we ought to react to it. I think we can take it for granted that we’re on some kind of spaceship, albeit a very old one — or one constructed according to a very old blueprint. It seems likely that the apparent gravity is simulated by acceleration, but I can’t believe we’re heading out of the system. Do you have anything useful to add to those conclusions, Mr. Tamlin?”
I was slightly surprised to find myself in the hot seat so soon, but I had already had time to think about what I ought and ought not to share with my companions — and what I wanted them to share with me.
“All I know for certain,” I said, modestly, “is that the person I saw looked human, and that the medical apparatus immediately available to her is primitive even by the standards of my time. She seemed to me to be telling the truth when she said that she’d like to explain but that she and her companion were engaged in difficult negotiations with other parties who want us kept in the dark.”
“Companion?” Horne echoed. “In the singular?”
“That’s what she said,” I confirmed. Hopeful of setting up a fair trade of information, I was quick to add: “Does anyone have a means of determining exactly how long we were asleep? That might offer a clue as to how long we’ve been traveling, where we might have been delivered to, and where we might be going.”
Lowenthal exchanged glances with Niamh Horne and Davida Berenike Columella. “I don’t have any way to estimate the interval,” he said.
“Nor I,” said Niamh Horne. If anyone was lying, it was most likely to be her, and she was sufficiently conscious of the fact to make a conciliatory gesture. “If it will help,” she said, “I’m prepared to concede that whoever subverted Child of Fortune’s systems must have had inside assistance. My first thought, having accepted that, is that the ship itself must have been the real target, and that the journey to Excelsior merely provided the opportunity. Seizing control of an AI as sophisticated as the ship’s controller must have required a subversive program of awesome ingenuity, but that’s not unimaginable. What puzzles me, however, is what can have happened afterwards. It’s possible that we have simply been marooned in a convenient location while Child of Fortunehas been taken elsewhere. Excelsior should have been able to keep track of the ship as it moved away, and its inhabitants must have raised the alarm immediately. If that’s the case, rescuers must already be on their way. If not…” She was content to leave the extrapolation of that possibility to us.